How to make $150,000,000+ on GTA 5

If you were to boil it to bare bones, Grand Theft Auto 5 is about money.

For all its college level satire, living breathing cityscapes and immersive diversions, at its heart, GTA 5 is about the acquisition of wealth. That said, without spoiling the story too much, our trinity of characters do not accumulate a great deal of cash until the completion of the final score. Even then, the payout is around the $25-$35 million mark, which means that players are some way off purchasing the high end properties in the game. So how to go from $25 million to $150+ million when gas station robberies and security truck hold ups might only bring in a couple of grand a time?

In a post economic crash GTA, with the public at large wary of big banking, the global economy and share movements, it is rather fitting that the fastest and easiest way to make money outside of heists is the stock market. Below are a series of rock solid methods of increasing your bank balance, beginning with the most sound.

The Assassination Missions.

Shortly after the first heist, Franklin is tasked by Lester to kill a number of high profile businessmen. The result of each assassination is the fluctuation of a rival companies share price. By investing a large amount of money in those rival companies you can make a large return once you have completed the mission. In-game, Franklin only receives the stock market tip once entering the mission, thus meaning that only he can invest in the stock market. By investing with each character before the mission, everyone can profit from the market manipulation.

Below are the companies you should invest in in tandem with completing the assassination missions. Note that should you wait until you have finished the main storyline to complete the bulk of the assassination missions your return will be far higher as you have that much more to invest. Completing these missions in tandem with the main storyline alongside other market investments netted me around $45 million before the big score. By waiting until after the big score, I was able to hit over $1 billion.

1-Hotel Assassination: Invest in BetaPharma (BAWSAQ) before the mission. Peaks at ~80%.

2- Multi-target Assassination. Invest in Debonaire before the mission. Return varies wildly from a peak of ~80% up to as high as ~300%. At that higher end, this represents one of best investment opportunities in the game.

3- Bus Assassination – Invest in Vapid AFTER the mission. Peaked at ~80% though has been known to peak both lower and higher.

4-The Vice Assassination – Invest in Fruit before the mission. Peaked at ~140%.

5-Construction Assassination – Invest in GoldCoast before the mission. Peaked at ~80%.

Note that the return on investments appears to vary from player to player and requires careful monitoring of the market post mission to maximize profit. I recommend staying away from large missions that will not allow you to use your phone until after you have pulled your stocks out. Use the quick save function on your phone at regular intervals to find the peak profit and pull out each characters stocks at this point. I attempted to exploit the passage of time when character’s sleep to speed through stock market changes but this did not appear to affect the stock market as much as simply driving around and allowing time to pass in that way.

Again, waiting until you have completed the big score will bring you past the $1 billion mark but should you have already completed them, there are other ways to make big bucks on the stock market.

Missions which cause fluctuations in the market.

This section contains missions that I know to have directly influenced the stock market. I will add to this list as and when I become aware of other missions that affect the market.

Spoilers follow.

The mission for Solomon which tasks Micheal with chasing Molly through the airport can give an investment return of between 100%-300% and as such, represents one of the best returns on investment I have yet found.

Following the completion of the mission, FlyUS stocks crash and hit a low of ~$1.5. Investing in FlyUS AFTER the mission at this record low can result in a huge return as whilst the stocks might only go back up to $3-$5, the % increase is huge. This one requires careful monitoring to get the largest return so have you phone at the ready.

The post Big Score mission that tasks the player with killing Stretch, Cheng and Haines in sequence. Investing in AuguryInsurance BEFORE completing this mission will result in a 100%-200% return on investment.

Non mission stock market tips.

Here is where I spent a lot of time experimenting, comparing results and seeing how my in-game actions affected the stock market. After consulting with other players, it appears that each players market differs slightly and as such, whilst FlyUS was my cash cow, it might not be yours.

Firstly, much of the information on the stock market is useless. The graphs do not appear to directly correlate to actual values. Look at individual companies’ lows and highs though be aware that many companies will not reach the high that is displayed there. I found that monitoring an in-game days worth of movement was enough to show me me which companies’ stock price regularly went up and down. These are the companies you want to invest in. Companies with huge fluctuations in price are where you make your money rather than those companies whose stocks are consistently high.

I made my millions with FlyUS by simply monitoring the market constantly and remembering to buy low and sell high. To make the most from the market, you want to look at low cost shares with the potential for the highest % increase. Whilst the stock price might only go up a few dollars, your profit return will be higher than with a large stock price company.

For example, FlyUS shares in my game generally had a bottom of $3.25 and a high of around $4.5. Whilst this might seem a mediocre return, should you have bought the shares at the low and sold at the high, you can expect a return of around 25%. Outside of missions that drastically affect the market, a 25% return on investments is huge.
My biggest piece of advice is to invest in companies with low stock price. FlyUS, DollarPills and other companies are good bets in that whilst their stocks might only increase by a few dollars, the return on an investment of $1 million or more is sizable. Once you have $40+ million plus in the bank, putting all your money into FlyUS is the easiest way to hit the cash level necessary to purchase the golf club or other high profile locations.

This method does of course require careful monitoring of the stock market and settling into a groove of what is a normal low and high for any given company. Stick with one company and learn that groove so that you are always turning a profit on your investments and remember to switch characters to maximize your money making potential.

Any other tips and tricks for playing the stock market or making money in GTA 5? Let us know below or on our Facebook or Twitter pages.

About The Author

jamessmart1

Er I have no idea how you got a 300% profit margin on the Debonnaire deal. I have tried it 3 times now (with 30+mil investments per each character) at the end of the game, logged in and out of rockstar social club, and waiting in between stock market fixes to give it time to reset.

Saved several times before as well, in case the margin would vary from one attempt to the next and the best I keep getting is around 80%. Actually 80% seems to be roughly the maximum margin for all of the fixes. The only exception for me being AUG industries just before doing the Big Score, which reached 99% and then capped.

Nice guide but the some of the reports seem clearly exaggerated (or you were very lucky indeed).

as with many of the other stock market variables, it does appear that there are variations from player to player.

In my own experience, the larger 300% increase on Debonaire stock occurred when I played the assassination mission in tandem with the storyline rather than after its completion – perhaps Rockstar placed some artificial cap on stock market increases after the large endgame payout as to limit the exploitation of this aspect of the stock market. It is equally likely that there were other coincidental changes in the market which attributed to the 300%ish gain or, as you stated, I may have just been very lucky.

Admittedly, the second time around, when doing said mission after the Big Score, my % increase was much lower – I will amend the article to reflect this.

In regards to using save files to jump time forward, I found that stocks grew and fell more when actually playing the equivalent time that a save would jump you forward – perhaps another attempt by Rockstar to avoid ‘cheap’ exploitation of the markets.

I’ll be continuing to play with the market and testing other theories on market manipulation – if you have any methods yourself, feel free to share!

Just wondering if you have studied the merryweather stock because I have a game I load so I can play with cheats and one game I’m trying to 100% without the cheats and merryweathers stock are massively differnt across the two games they’re minus 460% and on the other game they’re up about 50%

I am not certain the place you’re getting your info, but
good topic. I needs to spend some time studying much more or working out more.
Thanks for excellent info I used to be searching for this info for
my mission.

I found that after you do the main storyline with the best crew outcome you can do invest all.in debonaire save before doing the multi assassination mission then after wait for the stock to get to its peqkwhich i found came to about 325 and youll gget between 60 to 80 million then do the same for gold coast and by the end i got 130 million in less than a hour . Note keep two saves one before and and one for after that way if you get a weak pay off one time it will get higher quicker like gold coast for instance once i was able to get 60 million slowly but the second time i loaded an old save and got 80 million right after completion and sleeping or dying especially dying

with No internet connection and without cheating as Trevor I own the golf course And am currently at 200 million plus dollars. The largest single stock profit I made was in excess of 44 million dollars. Has anyone done better ?